FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT GREAT SCHOOL - PAGE 5

If a disease were striking down three out of 10 American children, there would be screams of outrage followed by a demand for action. There is such a plague among our nation's youth, yet this country has chosen to ignore it. Almost 30 percent of America's entering high school freshmen quit school. Forty percent of the minority teenagers in America, blacks and Hispanics, are out of school this very day. In our great urban centers, like New York City, dropout rates are 50 to 60 percent.

About 250 people streamed into Soldier Field Saturday for a public education expo that featured dozens of booths representing the steady growth of charter schools in Chicago. Chicago Public Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard used the event to emphasize that the best school options come in improving neighborhood campuses rather than on increasing the number that have selective enrollment. “I think as a community we're a bit too obsessed with selective enrollment,” Brizard said during the New Schools Expo, where he nonetheless praised existing selective enrollment schools such as Whitney Young Magnet High School.

St. Gregory the Great High School in Chicago's Edgewater neighborhood is closing at the end of the school year, the school announced on its website. St. Gregory, 1677 W. Bryn Mawr Ave., was the Archdiocese of Chicago's first coed high school. This marks the school's 75th year, but it has been plagued by declining enrollment and large deficits. In recent years, the school, which prides itself on a diverse student body, has made several moves toward survival, renting out part of its building and focusing on a technology-heavy curriculum.

New Trier High School is celebrating its 100th anniversary, yet before this institution was founded there were many people who didn't see the need for it. The farmers who began settling in the North Shore area in the early 1830s weren't interested in sending their older children to school because they were needed to work on the farm. But the expectations changed little by little. A railroad was built along the North Shore in 1854, so when Evanston Township High School opened its doors in 1883, students from farther north paid tuition and commuted to the new school.

These are exciting if unsettled times for DePaul basketball, with the bright prospect of a new power conference affiliation looming around questions about a new home arena and the on-court direction of Oliver Purnell's program under the guidance of athletic director Jean Lenti Ponsetto. Purnell is not yet "on the clock," according to Ponsetto, despite having his team finish last in the Big East in each of his first two seasons. Pressure to return the program to some semblance of its national prominence in the late 1970s and early '80s under legendary coach Ray Meyer is a process Ponsetto views as incremental.

The University of Illinois may have plans to become more selective, but officials at Illinois State University said Thursday they will take out newspaper ads and send mailings to high school students to let them know that another university wants them. "Want to learn more about the `other' great downstate school?" the ad asks. It directs potential enrollees to ISU's Web site. Sixty miles from Urbana-Champaign and ever in the shadow of the Big 10 school, ISU, in Bloomington-Normal, has seized the marketing moment.

To hear Claire Shingler tell it, "You know you're from Bowmanville if you know where Bowmanville is. " The Chicago neighborhood eight miles north of the Loop is a peaceful retreat from the clamor of surrounding North Side neighborhoods, said Shingler, a stay-at-home mom and vice president of the Bowmanville Community Organization. "We're mostly residential, so it's a lot quieter here," she said. A subsection of the Lincoln Square neighborhood, Bowmanville is bounded by Rosehill Cemetery and Western, Foster and Ravenswood avenues.

Bundled up against the biting cold on a recent evening, parents of students at Brentano Elementary Math and Science Academy knocked on doors and collected signatures in an effort to keep their school open. The parents don't know if the Logan Square grammar school will be among those targeted for closing when Chicago Public Schools releases its final list in March. But they've decided not to wait, creating one of the best-organized fronts in a battle being waged across the city by parents trying to save their local schools.

For generations of high school students, prepping for the SAT/ACT involved little more than getting a reasonable night's sleep, consuming something resembling breakfast and, if there was time, unearthing a functional No. 2 pencil. Today-thanks to record numbers of high school seniors applying to colleges-the game has changed. Cutthroat competition, once limited to students gunning for spots at top-tier schools, is a fact of life for anyone applying to college-or hoping to land one of those increasingly crucial financial aid packages.

The story of the 1963 Bears, Chicago's overlooked champions, begins at the end of the 1962 season. That year, the Bears won four of their last five games, including a 3-0 season finale against the Lions that many of the players recall as one of the toughest games they ever played. "After that game, and a handful of times in the offseason, Mike Ditka and I talked," Ed O'Bradovich recalled. "We said, 'We're good enough. We can win this thing.'" They had an abundance of young players who were hitting the sweet spots of their careers - Ditka and O'Bradovich, running back Ronnie Bull, center Mike Pyle, guard Roger Davis and defensive backs Roosevelt Taylor and Bennie McRae were among them.